Quotes of the day

posted at 8:01 pm on November 15, 2013 by Allahpundit

That the administration knew [of the cancellations] and failed to anticipate the inevitable outcry is political malpractice of the highest order. That policyholders who received cancellation notices didn’t have a functional Web site on which to seek alternatives makes that preexisting condition exponentially worse…

Listening to the president Thursday was painful. He acknowledged the need “to win back some credibility.” He “fumbled the rollout” of health care. He is “letting . . . down” congressional Democrats who took the risk of supporting Obamacare. Although he’s sometimes been “slapped around a little bit unjustly,” the president said, “This one’s deserved, all right? It’s on us.”

Obama’s latest claim will be just one more unmet expectation to be thrown back in the face of a leader who likes to tell his own worried aides when things are going badly, “I got this.” Except when he doesn’t.

“At every single point, they’ve over-promised and under-delivered” on Obamacare, said Matthew Dowd, George W. Bush’s former pollster who grew so disillusioned with his old boss’s performance that he voted for Obama. “And at every single point, they’ve chosen a short-term communications strategy, as opposed to a long-term governing strategy. And the short-term communication strategy was to put out the fire by saying ‘It’s all going to be OK.”’…

“They’ve endured far more long-term pain from their happy talk than they would have short-term pain from telling the truth,” [former speechwriter Daniel Pink] said. “I fear this is going to go into the annals with George H. W. Bush’s ‘no new taxes,’ and Bill Clinton’s ‘I didn’t have sex with that woman.’ It strikes me as something very sticky.”…

“There’s a piece of me that says this thing is just so complicated that God couldn’t have implemented it,” said Tom Peters, the veteran management guru and co-author of “In Search of Excellence.” “Every time you make one little adjustment, there are probably 150, if not 1,000, regulations that have to be taken into account. Would it be doable if it was inside a Google, with all the things the private sector allows you to do? But presumably at the top of the administration, I have to assume there was de facto no oversight of this thing.”

***

Democrats are fully aware of how their “fixes” are potentially fatal for the most expansive liberal reform in generations. They do not care. The political threat is that grave. Initially, they warned the president that he must do something to stop the bleeding. After President Bill Clinton admonished the president for failing to honor his “commitment” to voters, Democrats stopped asking…

This is a tale of misfortune and woe so Shakespearean that only history’s greatest bards could have ever dreamed it. So many liberals sacrificed so much to bring this creation to life. As it has become clear that their creation is a monster, they are struggling against the increasingly inescapable realization that they may have to kill it in order to save themselves, and their party, from an age in the wilderness.

The reliance on Republican policy proposals did nothing to generate Republican support. Instead of showing the falseness of partisan divisions, Obamacare has proven how deeply entrenched they truly are.

Far from introducing innovation and efficiency into the system, the decision to build a complex, 50-state public-private hybrid has introduced towering complexity into the project, and seems, potentially, to be beyond the government’s capacity to do well.

And protecting individuals from the predations of the market has mostly led to complaints from those benefitting from the predations of the market. Even the most unjust system has winners, and those winners cling tightly to what they’ve won.

***

The continuing problems with the Healthcare.gov website can be fixed—at least theoretically. What can’t be repaired is the 37 times Obama said Americans could keep their health insurance if they liked it. No amount of fine print about grandfather clauses and the small individual market and who really likes their health care plan anyway erases the fact that the president deceived the public. The damage such deceit can wreak on a presidency is why Obama issued his directive to state insurance commissioners to allow canceled plans to be reinstated until after the 2014 election. It was the first episode in a long series called Damage Control.

The ramifications of Obama’s lie will continue to haunt him. Republicans can now blame every negative piece of health care news on Obamacare and the president who signed it into law. And there will be plenty of bad news to come: the status of the lost individual plans remains unclear, the website remains broken, there is no guarantee that the administration will meet its enrollment targets, the employer mandate hasn’t gone into effect, and just wait until the first security breaches, privacy violations, and fraudulent subsidies hit the exchanges. By passing Obamacare on a party line vote, Democrats welcomed the politicization of the health care market, or 18 percent of the economy. They’re going to get it.

The Obama Revolution, which came to office with plans to expand dramatically the role of government in our lives and restore America’s reputation abroad, has come to a halt.

***

At stake, however, is more than the fate of one presidency or of the current Democratic majority in the Senate. At stake is the new, more ambitious, social-democratic brand of American liberalism introduced by Obama, of which Obamacare is both symbol and concrete embodiment.

Precisely when the GOP was returning to a more constitutionalist conservatism committed to reforming, restructuring, and reining in the welfare state (see, for example, the Paul Ryan Medicare reform passed by House Republicans with near unanimity), Obama offered a transformational liberalism designed to expand the role of government, enlarge the welfare state, and create yet new entitlements (see, for example, his call for universal preschool in his most recent State of the Union address).The centerpiece of this vision is, of course, Obamacare, the most sweeping social reform in the last half-century, affecting one-sixth of the economy and directly touching the most vital area of life of every citizen.

For four years, this debate has been theoretical. Now it’s real. And for Democrats, it’s a disaster.

***

The second, and more far-reaching, effect will be on Americans’ support for government social and economic programs. Since the country’s founding, Americans have always had an abiding distrust of the federal government. In the country’s first fifty years, that probably had a progressive effect by accelerating Westward economic expansion, but after the Civil War, business and banking leaders exploited this sentiment to block attempts to protect workers and consumers; later, the appeal to state’s rights was used to oppose civil rights laws.

It has taken panics, depressions, wars and social upheaval to get Congress to adopt social and economic reforms. At all other times, the publics’ distrust of government, as reinforced by business, has carried the day. Bill Clinton discovered that out in his first term when he tried to pass a national healthcare program. Obama succeeded in passing a health care bill in 2010 in the wake of the Great Recession. But if Obamacare doesn’t work as promised, then its failure will have reinforced for a generation the argument against any government initiatives. Reform will be dead – whether it’s to fix immigration, healthcare, or the growing gap between rich and poor.

***

Kettl says no major federal initiative has failed so thoroughly upon its unveiling since the ballistic-missile program’s first years in the 1950s produced a succession of explosions and failures to launch. “The last time something blew up on the runway like this,” Kettl says, “things were literally blowing up on the runway.”…

As the health law teeters, the stakes are so great because the struggle encapsulates each party’s core argument. It embodies the Democratic belief that society works better when risk is shared—between young and old, healthy and sick—and government intervenes in private markets to try to expand both security and opportunity. The fury of the Republican resistance reflects the party’s insistence that markets work best unfettered, that centralized government programs cannot achieve their goals, and that Democrats are unduly burdening the “makers” to support (and politically mobilize) the “takers.”

If most Americans conclude Republicans are right about the health care law, that judgment would inevitably deepen doubts about other government initiatives. In this world, Democrats could still hold the White House in 2016 around cultural affinity, but they would likely struggle to achieve much if they do. If the president can’t extinguish the flames surrounding Obamacare, this runway explosion could reverberate for years.

***

Most of them had no idea what they were voting for. They’re as surprised as anybody at what’s happened. And it’s not only because so many of them are idiots. They believed what they were told and, more important, they wanted to believe it. And, I suspect, they had a magical and almost touching belief in the ability of the U.S. government to do anything. It’s done anything in the past, why wouldn’t it now? (Because in the past it wasn’t asked to construct huge, sprawling, incoherent Rube Goldberg machines? And because government hasn’t always executed brilliantly, but often just well enough not to make everybody cry?)

One thing about the progressives of Congress: They really drank the Kool-Aid. They really did think government could do anything. They were sincere! They really thought there were no limits.

I wonder if this will sober them up.

People are wondering if we are seeing the end of liberalism. We are not. Liberalism, a great and storied American political tradition, will survive this. But progressivism—liberalism without blood—has been badly, deeply damaged. We are seeing the end of its first major emanation, ObamaCare.

***

That, to my mind, is what Thursday’s announcement really signals, and why I think it’s so significant. Prior instances of reckless presidential expediency in the debate over Obamacare have involved efforts to get past some immediate obstacle and just get the system into place, in the hope that once it was working the criticisms would fade away. This latest instance, however, involves roughly the opposite impulse: to sacrifice the prospects of the new system itself in the service of avoiding immediate political pain and embarrassment and without some larger goal in view.

It suggests that the administration is giving up on the long game of doing what it takes to get the system into place and then trusting that the public will come around and is adopting instead the mentality of a political war of attrition, fought news cycle by news cycle, in which the goal is to survive and gain some momentary advantage rather than to achieve a large and well-defined objective. It suggests, in other words, that the administration is coming to the view that Obamacare as they have envisioned it is not really going to happen, that they don’t know quite what is going to happen (and no one else does either), and that they need above all to keep their coalition together and keep the public from abandoning them so they can regroup when the dust clears.

***

[I]n this country we don’t change bad laws by presidential fiat. We change them by having Congress rewrite them or by starting from scratch. Obama doesn’t want to reopen this law for fear that Republicans and some Democrats will substantially rewrite it. But that’s what has to happen.

We understand why the president and leaders of his party want to rescue whatever they can of Obamacare. On their watch, official Washington has blown the launch of a new entitlement program … under the schedule they alone set in early 2010.

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Comments

Somebody didn’t give you the good news on your hero Romney.
RickB on November 16, 2013 at 1:04 AM

Ok, I was all ready to say “screw him” and “glad he lost.”

But then I looked more closely at what he said. He says he is still against a special pathway to citizenship.

Please show me his change. I don’t think it was ever his position that someone here illegally should never be able to apply for citizenship. It was just that they’d have to “self-deport” and apply and wait along with everyone else.

This is a tale of misfortune and woe so Shakespearean that only history’s greatest bards could have ever dreamed it.

The public’s anxiety will not abate. Obama will not escape blame, and his party’s representatives in Congress are fighting for their careers… Democrats are fully aware of how their “fixes” are potentially fatal for the most expansive liberal reform in generations. They do not care. The political threat is that grave.

And the incredible thing is that this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as the future backlash against the Dems and the “Affordable” Care Act. The future portends a total Obamacare caused wipeout for the Dems that will make 2010 look like a cake walk.

In the near future, there will be the mess springing from Obama’s dubious action yesterday, continuing web site failures and cost overruns, enrollments falling woefully short with a heavy bias toward older people, a growing disenchantment of the youth with the ACA, new shocking revelations about ACA’s whopping effects on spending and the deficit, and the yet to be felt major major impacts of the ACA hitting the small business (less than 50 employees) and big business employer markets.

But the most destructive thing by far that will befall the Democrats will be the unfolding of the $750 billion in painful cuts to Medicare, which will hit virtually the entire population of seniors. You talk about a group that doesn’t like getting screwed over, and votes… it’s seniors.

The doubly painful thing for the Dems is that senior citizens will see another unquestionable lie by Obama and the Dems regarding the Medicare cuts.

Just as Obama said over and over again that “you can keep your plan, period”, they said over and over that the Medicare cuts were simply for “overpayments” to providers. Of course anybody with half a brain would realize that if the cuts were just for wasteful overpayments, these cuts would have been made a long time ago.

No, these cuts will cut deeply into the quality of care for our seniors.

I kind of wish that the Dems do nothing and let Obamacare wreak its havoc on the donkeys in congress, but I know that by far the best thing for the Dems to do is repeal the ACA in full, right away, and move on… quickly!

the events of the last month have shown that Sens. Ted Cruz and Mike Lee were correct to make a final stand against the law, and it’s really the president and his policies that are terrorizing the country.

In those four weeks, and the two prior, everything conservatives said would happen has happened. What’s more, the Democrats’ united stand against them has turned into a retreat — and is primed to become a rout — as they amend Obamacare’s disastrous rollout, President Barack Obama apologizes for his failures, and electorally vulnerable Democrats break ranks and flee.

It’s clear now that the whole shutdown thing could have been avoided if Mr. Obama had been willing to bend on his signature health-care law — something reality has since forced him to do, and something he will likely have to continue to do — instead of accusing the Republicans of being “terrorists” who are holding the country captive.

Because since Obamacare has come into effect, millions have seen their health-care plans cancelled; enrollment numbers have lagged 80 percent behind the White House’s predictions; every facet of the sign-up process has failed to deliver; and some of the very “navigators” who are supposed to make all that easier have been exposed as criminals.

And for the two weeks that preceded this debacle, the story is one of Republicans fighting with everything they had to save the country from what they saw coming.

Good point. Though maybe you hadn’t seen my entry just above. There are so many factors now that are swirling together to cause the epic cremation of the Dems, and yes, when those on group plans start getting dropped, or they start losing their jobs or getting compensation or the like, that will be very bad news for the Dems.

And it’s not just the bad effects and pain of what is and will happen, it’s the lies that will once and for all be exposed as lies. Earlier I posted the Six Lies of Obamacare, as discussed in more detail in this headline thread. Here’s a repost:

(1) “If you like your policy, you can keep your policy.” LIE

(2) “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” LIE

(3) “Obamacare will bend the cost curve down. It will reduce the average American family’s health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year.” LIE

As for Romney and illegal immigration, I don’t think he changed his position. However, I don’t think that anyone here illegally should ever, ever be given citizenship. Let them apply, though. But their crime should not be treated as somehow less of a crime than those of other criminals.

Obama has lied many times before, and fumbled or evaded any explanations, but up until now the media was fully united in covering his rear and not allowing his flubs and fibs to persist in the news cycles. And Democrats were always lockstep behind him, too, there were no dissenting voices, so all the complaints about Obama could be chalked up to Republican partisanship.

Suddenly, media deserts him, probably realizing this is too big to hide, and Democrats show the first allegiance of any politician: self-preservation. Obama is shocked, and at a loss, as he has never had to deal with such a situation before.

~~

ObamaCare was always doomed. It would have been too much of an undertaking for the leading hospital administrators, medical manufacturers, doctors’ groups, and insurers to build in ten years, and they all have experience in the field. Instead, this monstrosity was patched together by people with no experience outside government, academia, or law, and with the framework of a government giveaway, not something built to make a profit.

The secret is that when you design for a profit, your system never delivers as much as it is supposed to. When you design to break even if everything goes just so, as this was, you are guaranteed to go belly-up financially.

If the website and cancellations don’t kill ObamaCare, the coming tsunami of red ink will.

As I said earlier, Romney “severe” anti-amnesty stance was the only reason he got the nomination. Now his true colors surface. Just as well that the evasive double talker lost the election. Because he would have betrayed us. Of course, that’s what we feared.
anotherJoe on November 16, 2013 at 3:36 AM

He’s still saying he’s against special pathway to citizenship. Where’s the change?

As for Romney and illegal immigration, I don’t think he changed his position. However, I don’t think that anyone here illegally should ever, ever be given citizenship. Let them apply, though. But their crime should not be treated as somehow less of a crime than those of other criminals.

bluegill on November 16, 2013 at 2:50 AM

…even though you are anally attuned only to tunneling your political focus on amnesty all the time…I have to agree with you on what you just said…except for the Romney position thing…he was an immigration slut!

I have to ask something. I keep reading about how everyone is so interested in smoking pot and how it is motivating them to vote so they can get it more easily. I see “420” on online profiles ALL THE TIME. People seem so obsessed with getting high. Like it’s the main thing they think about every day. People giggle about it and love pictures of the stuff and enjoy watching movies about it. Has it always been this prevalent? I really feel like, in the last 10 years, young people have become a lot more into the stuff. It’s almost like you’re in the minority if you don’t do it now. FYI, I’ve never used it and I have no desire to. Seems really sad that, of all the issues to care about, that’s one of the ones that most drives young people to vote.

Among the 6,351 people who bought qualified health plans during the first month of open enrollment on the exchange, nearly 38 percent were 55 to 64 years old.
At the other end of the age spectrum, a little more than 5 percent of enrollees were between ages 18 and 25

He said to Chris Wallace in March: “People who have come here illegally should not be given a special pathway to permanent residency or citizenship in this country merely because they’ve come here illegally.” Now he says that they SHOULD be given a pathway to citizenship. So, in answer to your question, that’s the change, the predictable flip flop because in the mid 2000s he was also for amnesty then. Romney is the king… of flip flopping.

And though Romney says they should have to “wait in line” for amnesty, big deal, amnesty or earnesty has always put puffery in about “waiting in line.” Whatever happened to Romney’s idea that they should “self deport?”

But who cares. I’m glad you’re on board being against amnesty, and as far as Romney is concerned, who cares. I don’t want to have to waste my time thinking about that unquestionable loser. This thread is supposed to be about Obamacare.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.

Santa always returns home with an empty sack and all the kids wake up happy the next day. Wonder how everyone will feel the next day when they find out that Obamao’s sack is empty and there will be no more bailouts or kickbacks. Note to insurance execs, stop expecting manna from the govt. Earn it the old fashioned way.